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How do you solve a problem like Mike Lee?

In the days and weeks following Mike Lee's infamous posts, the Mormon Church's Headquarters stayed silent. Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. No official press release. No tweet from the General Authorities. No letter sent out to all U.S. wards to be read from the Bishop on Sunday condemning the behavior. From what I can tell, the only thing the church did was put out this article through their propaganda arm, the Deseret News editorial board.

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Jeff Holland Offers Non-Apology For Musket Speech, Seeks Sympathy For His Own Hurt Feelings

Jeff meanders through his experiences and others' before moving on to discuss a concerning letter he received from someone he won't mention. Are they a leader within the church? Part of the faculty BYU? Just some Mormon out in the world somewhere? Are they in the room with you now, Jeff? Is the anonymous person just a place holder for pseudonymous Jeff speaking in the third person? Only corporate white Mormon Jesus could know.

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Response to Deseret News opinion piece “Perspective: Don’t believe the headlines. Few people suffer trauma from religion in childhood”

You may have noticed that the Deseret News article references other churches' scandals rather than the plentiful scandals of its own Utah-based church. 'What Mormon church scandals in recent headlines?' you might ask if your only source of news is Zion's own Deseret News. Here are just a few you can find with your own modern-day seer stone called Google that happened within the last two years:

DezNat Smackdown

But more than just Digital Danites, these Mormons see themselves as doing God's work to decry feminism, diversity, and inclusivity wherever they can. They proudly boast bigotry, homophobic, racist, misogynistic, and xenophobic vitriol with gusto, and have quite the echo chamber of insecure Mormon incels who scour social media looking for slights to be corrected with harassment. They frequently will pile onto social media posts or message boards to harass, insult, or condescend to marginalized groups, victims of Mormon malfeasance, or their favorite enemy, the dreaded exMormon.

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The Perfect Storm of Conditions For Apostasy – Part 6 Rebuilding A New Life

In 2016 I found myself in a similar position as I had in 2013, but the rule of sequels is always go bigger with the sequel. And that's exactly what my wife did. She successfully pulled off a double life for several months. She did enough this time to surely be excommunicated, but she'd also …

Continue reading The Perfect Storm of Conditions For Apostasy – Part 6 Rebuilding A New Life

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The Perfect Storm of Conditions For Apostasy – Part 5 Permission To Question

With the demands of my three callings and my leaders asking me to spend money I didn't have for my callings, I was feeling very burned out and frustrated. One November evening in 2015 I was watching TV and doom scrolling (looking at social media on my phone). I saw someone post on Facebook about …

Continue reading The Perfect Storm of Conditions For Apostasy – Part 5 Permission To Question

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The Perfect Storm of Conditions For Apostasy – Part 4 Disillusionment at Church. Again.

For a church that preached how important family is, I couldn't believe how often I was being expected to spend time or money away from my family. I was burned out and angry that so much was expected of me, and I didn't ask for any of it. Church responsibilities were demanding more and more from me all the time, and I was nearing my breaking point.

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The Perfect Storm of Conditions For Apostasy – Part 3 Cognitive Dissonance

When I returned from the mission field I had a completely different belief in God than I did when I left. He was not as involved in the church or my daily life nearly as much as I'd been taught to believe. No, He would pop up for the real important things, but otherwise leave us free to exercise our judgement as best we could. That was a major takeaway for me. So it continued to bother me when others at church would tearily blare their testimony about the so-called "God of lost car keys". The God who cares so very much about you that He guided you to your missing car keys so that you wouldn't be late to work. The personal, coddling God, by whose grace it is you scored a touchdown. The vending dispenser God who would shower you with blessings if only you would but ask. The God who solves mundane, unimportant, banal first world problems in such a miraculous way, that one can't help but bare testimony of it at Open Mic Sunday.